Howl in Biggar by Tom Bryan
The poet Allen Ginsberg visited Hugh MacDiarmid at Brownsbank Cottage on at least two occasions.
Ginsberg once sat where I now write,
as gales clap the cottage slates.
The hills are chittering white.
That June, cows in one field,
ponies in the other. Yellow broom
in spate, gilding the path. He hurried,
but was late. The yapping terrier kept him poised,
outside either gate.
Like detectives who lift fingerprints I would
prise their conversation from this faded room,
from that expectant summer.
Two communists, two poets,
both short of cash,
one hard of hearing, one talking too softly
one on whisky, one on stash.
"Beats? Cosmopolitan scum, birds without wings."
"But Burroughs and Trocchi were friends of mine!"
The long day chuntered on, more smoke and wine.
One poet talking over the snoring dog,
of Yevtushenko, Babel, poet as prophet,
dunting his pipe's ashes on the hearthstone log.
MacDiarmid in tweed, Ginsberg in flannel and overalls.
Bees drowsy against the window.
It went well, we think, down to the last
cup of tea.
The older couple waved the poet out the gate
and down, Ginsberg smoking, stroking horses,
sauntering into the longest day of the year,
turning left, then gone.
Today, I squint into the cold fog, where Winter
concedes those poets (like summer)
are not dead, but merely underground
and stirring.
Tom Bryan was Brownsbank Fellow from 2005-2008
